"Can you imagine," said Aslie Pitter, "what the comments might have been had the linesman in this week's football sexism row been an openly gay man? I mean, I would bet anything that the off-air comments would have been just as derogatory, if not far worse."

Pitter was speaking to the Standard after having his suit fitted for his upcoming visit to Buckingham Palace, where he will receive his MBE for tackling homophobia in football and for his work with Stonewall FC, the country's first gay team, founded 20 years ago.

"I'm often asked, 'Have things improved in football since 1991?'" he said. "The answer is: how many openly gay players do you see in the Premiership today? There are none. Zero. Think about that. Apart from Justin Fashanu - who only came out at the end of his career and whose footballing brother John disowned him - there has been nothing. Rugby, in comparison, has made tremendous strides. Gareth Thomas has come out as gay, as have others, but football is stuck in the Dark Ages.

"From the top of the game to the amateur leagues, homophobia as well as sexism is seething just below the surface and ready to pop out at the merest provocation. The fact that Sky's Richard Keys could say on air, 'We wish her the best of luck' but then behind the scenes slag her off by saying, 'The game's gone mad' is evidence of how most people keep their true views well hidden.

"Only two weeks ago I was the physiotherapist for our first team and standing on the touchline when an opposing player started hurling abuse at me, shouting, 'Shut up you queer, you batty man!' - just because I'd pointed out that he was taking the throw-in from the wrong spot."

For Aslie, the celebration of his MBE as a gay ambassador for football has, however, been overshadowed by the subsequent sudden death of his 86-year-old father Vincent from a heart attack. The mantelpiece at his home in Balham, south London, where he lived with his dad for his entire life - and which is full of both congratulatory and sympathy cards - tells the bittersweet story.

"It's been a confusing time and people who call me don't know whether to celebrate or commiserate," Aslie said. "I'm grateful that the news of my MBE came before dad died, that he knew I was about to be honoured, because for dad, a child of Empire who came over from Jamaica with the Windrush generation, my getting an MBE was like I'd married royalty."

But the MBE had an added piquancy because, until recently, Vincent had never acknowledged Aslie's sexuality. "Ideally, the only son Dad had with Mum (both my parents have children from previous marriages) would not have been gay," said Aslie.

"He never said anything negative, in fact he never said anything at all. But in late November, when I read him the letter that I'd be getting an MBE for helping to tackle homophobia in London, he broke into a big dopey grin, laughed uproariously and proudly told me, 'Son, you're the star of the family!'"

Aslie's journey since joining Stonewall FC 20 years ago has been funny as well as painful, he said. "We're probably the only football team in the country where you have to deal with fallout because the defender was shagging the goal-keeper and is now going out with the centre-forward. It makes for a witty changing room, I can tell you. But it's not always light banter. "I remember getting ready to play for Stonewall at Hurlingham Park in Fulham in the Nineties and six of their players barged into our dressing room and started shouting, 'You gonna die, batty man! You full of Aids!' They hurled abuse at us for about five minutes and we sat there quivering. Out on the pitch they were all elbows and dangerous tackles and they were high-fiving each other every time one of us got flattened."

Although Stonewall FC went on to win respect from most of their straight opponents for becoming a successful Saturday and Sunday league team - and having won the Gay Games in Chicago 2006 and Cologne 2010, they are indisputably the best gay team in the world - the abuse never fully subsided. "It has got more subtle, and the majority of our games pass without incident, but you can never relax because suddenly you get a rattled opponent who starts calling you 'batty man'."

An assistant manager at Boots, Aslie has had to endure racist as well as homophobic abuse. "When I was 17, I played for a straight white amateur Sunday league team in Clapham and I'd get called 'wog' by my own team-mates. I'd walk through Clapham Common crying my eyes out and thinking, thank goodness they don't know I'm gay!

"I learnt never to let on that it hurt because you'd be told 'it was just banter' and that you had 'a chip on your shoulder'. But I also naively believed that I could win them over, that the abuse would stop when they saw how talented I was."

Aslie, a midfielder, had talent indeed: he was selected for the Sutton United youth team and had a trial at Wimbledon. But his days in straight teams came to an end, he says, when a team-mate at Clapham Old Boys found out he was gay and next thing, the coach dropped him from the first to the fourth team.

Meanwhile, an advert in Time Out at around the same time in early 1991 caught Aslie's eye. It said: "Are you gay? Would you like a kickabout in Regent's Park?"

"I went along and that was when Stonewall began. There were about 40 of us and we entered teams in the Saturday and Sunday leagues. There was a debate as to whether we should out ourselves but we were saved the trouble when the Mirror got hold of the story and dubbed us 'Queens of the South'."

Today Stonewall FC has grown to 60 players and they field three teams, playing home games at Barn Elms playing fields in Barnes, west London. Aslie plays for and manages the second team. "Today there are five other gay teams in England so we're no longer unique. But with all that we've been through, from some colleagues dying of Aids to others meeting their life partners, the club has become an extended family, and more than a football club."

Aslie knew he was gay from about the age of 10. "I remember going on a school trip to the Isle of Wight and the teacher shouting, 'Bath time boys!' and me thinking, yeah! I fancied this boy but there was nobody in the world I could tell. At 13 another pupil asked me, 'Are you gay?' and I said, 'What if I am?' After that, I never denied anything."

At his comprehensive school in Balham, the abuse was relentless.

"I was called 'batty boy' and they would scratch 'faggot' into my desk. In those days you had to just grin and bear it."

Aslie was close to his parents - especially to his mum, Evelyn, a cleaner, who died of cancer four years ago - but telling them was not an option. "There was a TV programme called Gay Life and I used to sneak into the living room and watch it with the lights out. One day mum joined me. There was a moment when two men touched and mum shrieked, 'Oh, look at them two!' Instinctively I snapped at her. That's when she realised I was gay."

Fifteen years ago Aslie brought his current partner, Alan, 43, a radiographer, to live with him. By then they'd split the family home into two flats - Aslie lived downstairs and his parents upstairs, and his mother would holler down when dinner was ready. "When Alan came to live, my mum asked, 'Is that your sweetheart?' And I laughed my head off. I felt accepted by her.

"But with Dad, a delivery van driver, it was more difficult. As a child, I thought he was the funniest man on the planet but I was also scared of him because he was a disciplinarian. In later years he mellowed, and after I told him about the MBE, he laid out a sharp suit that he said he'd wear to the Palace, and I went out and bought him a trilby."

Vincent Pitter never did get to wear his trilby. Last week, as Aslie prepared to bury his father, he stood tearfully before his open casket and lamented: "If only you could have hung on a little longer, Dad."

Aslie has invited his "mother-in-law" to accompany him and Alan instead. He grins. "Well, my future mother-in-law. Dad's dying has made me realise how short life is. As soon as I get my MBE, the silver lining is that Alan and I are getting married."